I want Seattle to be the Cleveland Browns of basketball

Last Thursday, spurned Sonics fans made their annual pilgrimage to Portland (the green and gold demonstration in front of the Thunder). ESPN led SportsCenter with shots of Sonics fans, the Seattle P-I featured Squatch on the homepage, and the Blazers EdgeTwitPic of Squatch made Twitter’s Top Tweets. At the Rose Garden, Squatch raised a sign that read: HOMELESS. “That was Matt Heuer, and he met up with us in the group before the game. Easily the best idea of the night with amazing execution!” Adam Brown, the Producer of Sonicsgate, wrote. I monitored the game, and the blogs about the game from my catbird seat in Seattle. Adam gmailed me answers to questions I had — so I could get a heightened sense of the night, “As we first walked into the arena, Frank Brickowski was standing there with the ticket lady. We talked to him for a couple minutes about the whole Sonics situation … cool guy who thought the whole thing was really messed up.”

Adam estimated there were 100 Sonics fans scattered about, and mentioned that the green and gold stood out from the Blazers’ red and black, “Every time we’d go out for a beer or bathroom break, we’d see at least a few groups of Sonics fans and go hoot and holler with them.” Although Blazers fans were supportive, “One drunk guy was yelling profanities at us and security talked to both him and us … we thought we were getting kicked out and they were actually on our side.” In the final seconds of overtime Brandon Roy pump-faked Kevin Durant out of his line of sight. But missed the jumper. And that was that. The Ex-Sonics beat their old I-5 rivals. Adam and the movement went out into the Portland night, “We linked up with a few guys and got some celebration shots nearby afterwards, including the guys whose picture was on SportsCenter next to ours.”

Most of the Internet chatter focused on Squatch. Heuer actually donned a Chewbacca mask (various posts noted that the suit was really the Star Wars character). And he wore the early 70’s Sonics uniform (#31 — Jim Fox or Brent Barry?). The Sonicsgate crew is great at getting the word out, but even wearing green and gold and raising a Seattle SuperSonics banner behind the Thunder is irritatingly overlooked at this point. In my opinion the national (and local) media would not have taken notice (as much) without Chewie.

The outfit was dramatic and Heuer’s simple act of putting it on, and going to the game was like an adrenaline needle to the heart of the movement. NewsOK asked, “Whatever happened to the real Squatch? Like the team he cheered, the man inside the costume also relocated to Oklahoma City and has since become the Thunder’s mascot, Rumble.” Which brings up a good question. Where is the Squatch suit? It’s not at MOHAI (at least it’s not on exhibit). But, I have heard the Burke Museum is rumored to be readying the old Sonics mascot for a dinosaur exhibit. Kurt Helin of Pro Basketball Talk had a backhanded wishy-washy riff about the Squatch sighting, “Pretty funny stuff. Clever, but you expect that out of Sonics fans. Of course, if they really want a team back in town they need to help get a new arena built. Then again, Seattle fans have been pushing and hoping for a new arena for years only to be let down by owners and politicians.

“So maybe mascots and clever is the way to go.”

Helin wisely acknowledged the arena debacle was out of fans hands. But his half serious, half-a**ed take on the plight of the Sonics fan was lazy and maddening. My friend Rod, the Sonics Historian, and his brothers treat the Sonics legacy as if it were The Book of Eli. There is this blasé attitude toward anything Sonics. In NBA cities, it’s like, yeah you lost your team — that sucks, but we have a team. Suckers. Before the game The Portland Roundball Society posted Sonicsgate’s press release for the green and gold demonstration. They lent their support with a snarky blurb, “We here at PRS encourage all available Supersonic fans to show up–not because we like Seattle in particular (we don’t), but because we want our interstate cellar-dwelling rivals back, not to mention shorter travel for division games. Get the rally on TNT!” Cellar-dwelling? Seattle had a better record for the last two decades than Portland. That aside, this movement needs attention — needs to hang around to have a shot at a comeback.

I want Seattle to be the Cleveland Browns of basketball (and coincidentally Steve Ballmer sold a bit of Microsoft stock recently).

Note from Sonicsgate: Thanks to a sponsorship from Jeff Scoma, owner of Seattle Team Shops, we were able to print 2,000 Sonicsgate DVDs that we’ll be giving away at our events and using for press. Fans have been asking us about how they can buy a DVD constantly for a year now, but we can’t legally sell them because of NBA footage issues, so this is a really exciting way for us to give people the DVDs for free.

So while supplies last, fans will get a FREE limited edition copy of the full movie on DVD when they buy an official Sonicsgate T-shirt from the Seattle Team Shops (SoDo / Bellevue) and Rock Paper Scissors (Capitol Hill). If they are out of town, they can order a shirt online and a free DVD will ship with it.

Reed Wacker can be reached at reedwacker@gmail.com, his website, Facebook page or Twitter feed.